December 10, 2025 • 24 mins
Andrew and Mia discuss the pro- and anti-natalist movements and how they generate reactionary politics.
Sources:
https://iep.utm.edu/anti-natalism/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/11/what-is-pronatalism-right-wing-republican
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40660745/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to ache it up
in here. I'm Andrew Sage also known as Andrewism, and
I'm joined once again by that's a cue.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Mia Wong girl, who was really really the first time
was like I Am not going to miss my cue
this time. And then this time I was like, oh,
I'm waiting for the queue, and then it was like shit,
that's the cue. And it took my brain like several
seconds to be like, oh no, it would be very
funny if the editors just edited out the pause so
(00:41):
everyone has no idea what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
That's that would be hilarious actually, But there was unaware
that was like a ten second pause before me I
came in.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
No, really truly, this is Mia on like three hours
of sleep brain. I was like, oh, yeah, right, the
key is going to come and then it things going
great for be A Wong, the other person who's on
this show. You know who I am. Statistically, if you're
listening to the show, who of.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Course, I mean speaking of seconds. By the way, in
those ten seconds that you were waiting for your queue
that had already passed, hundreds of people were born, you know,
every second somewhere someone is being born. Like other animals,
humans have this tendency to multiply. But should they That
(01:39):
is the question of the day. This is the last
episode I was on. We spoke about the worries surrounding populasia.
You know, whether we have too many people or too
few people. But the question of making people or not
making them has been the subject of a few ideological classes.
There's a whole movement of thinkers who argue that in
(02:00):
new life into the world is a big mistake. These
are the anti natilists. On the other side, you have
those who say that having children is good and essential.
That's the proneat to list cap. So in this episode
will be getting into that tug of war philosophically and
weighing the issues with both. Because I'm not going to
(02:21):
make it a secret, I'm not a fan of either
of them. I don't know, how do you feel about.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, this is the one, the one good Stalin quote.
They're both worse.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So we have to pick among those twos. Let's start
with the anti natilists. What what's the kind of gut
reaction or impression you get from those those folks.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I don't know. I think there's a combination of stuff
that's largely harmless and sometimes is funny, Like you get
protested people holding up signs that are like I didn't
ask to be born or didn't consent to be born,
and it's like sure, but then then there's all people
just do mass you things about it. So it's great,
it's a good time. It's a very normal time for politics.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean when I think of them,
I tend to think cringe and reddit. But they actually
have a philosophy outside of Reddit forums. So, according to
the Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy, anti natialism is the view that
it is either always or usually morally impermissible to brookerate. Now,
(03:30):
most of us grew up with the idea that life
is inherently valuable, right, but anti natilists disagree. They see
life as a buden rather than a gift. Very edgy,
very reddit. But you know, it's something that has been
around since before the Internet. While not himself an anti natalist,
the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who lived in the nineteenth century,
(03:53):
is taught by some anti natalists as a contributor to
their philosophical foundations. In his description of life as constant,
striving frustration and pain. In the twentieth century, the Romanian
writer Emil Choran argued that non existence is the ultimate
form of peace. His philosophical pessimism regarded individual life and
(04:17):
human history as a whole as a record of error, illusion,
and futility. And most famously, South African philosopher David Bennetta
laid out one of the main anti neatilist arguments in
his book Better Never to Have been the harm of
coming into existence. It's a bang aside, though. Now you
(04:38):
can find theoretical contributions to anti natilists thought in Buddhism's
idea that life is suffering, or incidant interpretations of it
rather or incident gnostic traditions that saw the material willed
itself as a kind of cosmic mistake. Now, there are
a lot of reasons that anti natialists put forward for
their stance. There are philanthropic misanthropic arguments an planutialism. You know,
(05:03):
the philanthropic ones focus on harm to the individual who
is brought into existence, while the misanthropic arguments tend to
focus on the harm that new people cause to the will.
So there's the consent argument that Mia would have mentioned.
You know, basically, a child that cannot consent to be inborn,
so by creating them you're forcing them into life. They
didn't ask for a life that will inevitably include suffering.
(05:26):
Another argument is in that sort of negative utilityianism camp.
It's the idea that our moral priority should be reducing suffering,
not increase in happiness. In fact, they don't see the
potential or actuality of pleasure as an offset to suffering
at all. You know, under their view, even a single
(05:46):
unit of suffering is unacceptable, and since every new life
will include suffering, not creating life is the surest way
to reduce it. If Benetta had the famous asymmetry argument,
which is that the presence of pain is bad, the
presence of pleasure is good, but the absence of pain
is always good, even if no one appreciates that good,
(06:08):
and the absence of pleasure isn't bad unless there's someone
missing out. So put simply, according to the argument, by
not having a child, you avoid guaranteed suffering without depriving
any person of joy because that person doesn't exist. So
that equation is probably one of the main pillars, i'd
(06:28):
say of the anti Natilists as a movement. You know,
you might be thinking to yourself, Oh, but I'm glad
to be alive.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
No, you're not.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
According to according to Bennetta and the anti Natilists, you're
deluded to think so. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls
it the deluded gladness argument. Basically, your positive view of
your own life is unreliable. But how it argues that
we have cognitive biases like optimism and selective memory and
(07:10):
so on, which distort how viciously we assess our own suffering.
So many good life reports. Even if you think you
have a good life or a decent life, you're deceiving yourself,
according to him. Do you think people are deceiving themselves
when they say that they enjoy their lives?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
You know, this entire line of argument is just making
me be like, you need to do less philosophy and
like go outside and live.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Like it's just like, yeah, I mean, I get the
whole thing about you know, all mental bias towards optimism
and that kind of thing, but that doesn't invalidate the
joy of people appreciating their life.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, it's like this. This sounds like the exact script
you get in your head when you're really depressed. It's like, okay,
like have you considered getting your depression managed and getting
help for it instead of like doing philosophy about it.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
I feel like you would be an antenage list. Oh
you're yeah, like another thing murders well.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And it's also frustrating because it's like the most compelling
version of this argument is about like this world right
now is absolutely dog shit and I can't justify bringing
someone into it. But that's like too grounded. It's all
these people are like, no, no, no, no, no, Actually, here's
like this philosophy that proves that that life bad.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And it's like, uh, I mean that there are antage
lists arguments that do get into that more grown dated
Oh yeah, definitely, no, yeah, thing you know that they
have one argument about multiplying suffering, right, because every child
you bring into the wool is in just one boos son.
You know, they have the potential to hapture themselves and
grandchildren and so on, multiplying the child answers of pain, disease, loss,
(09:02):
suffering down the generations.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It's like this is like long termism shit it's just like,
instead of like actually analyzing the world, we're going to
build unbelievably complicated and completely meaningless, like abstract models of
it and try to base our things off of that.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's it's totally ridiculous. Now, I understand.
You know, our Tarck record isn't the best. You know,
they're their plagues and slavery and genocide, environmental destruction, and
some of them, see, well that's the best thing. The
best thing we could do is to voluntarily go extinct,
you know, to step off the stage of the earth.
And that connects with the general misanthropy, and I think
(09:41):
the misanthropic argument that humans are some kind of blight
on the world. Yeah, and they're anti nelists who take
it a step further as well, And they're not just
antilists for humans, they're universal antiseilsts. So they believe that
not just human births are problematic, but existence itself, sentient
beings across the board, human or animal are better off
(10:04):
never being brought into life at all.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Really, truly, at this point, brother, this is a you problem.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
You just don't like existing, Like, we can work on that,
but this is not a philosophical think, like you're just depressed, Like,
come on, what are we doing here?
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, I mean, anthonatialism is making some very heavy claims,
and they're obviously going to be coming to arguments because
people are going to roll over with the kind of
asslutions that it makes. The most intuitive answer I would
give is that yes, life involves suffering, but it also
includes pleasure and joy and creativity and achievements, and for
(10:42):
most people, those positives outweigh the negatives. And if you're
a radical, you recognize that some of the negatives of
life are not inevitable. The famines, the wars, the suffering,
the poverty, it's not inevitable. It's a product of economic
and political systems that we have the power to change.
And yes, there will always be suffering. They may always
(11:05):
be some diseases, there will always be death, right, but
that doesn't mean that existence is worse than non existence.
I'm glad to exist. Me. I feel like you're probably
glad to exist. I'm glad you.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Exist, yeah, most of the time. Like this this is
a distinct improvement for positions I have been in. But like, yeah,
it's nice, yes, you know, like even even in the
middle of like the hell world.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
It's nice. Yeah, and yeah, the biases may skew our perspective,
but the fact that we overwhelmingly choose life itself is
a reason too not throw it out.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Whilst people are given the choice do you want to
live right now? And I mostly people want to say
they're going to live, you know. Yeah, and yes, we
don't consent to be in born, but there are other
things that we don't consent to that we still benefit from.
You know, in funds, don't consent to be vaccinated, but
it's it's something that benefits them, you know, we educate
(12:08):
in funds, we restrain them from danger. We don't ask
their permission necessarily to do these things, but it's just
for their well being, for their benefit. And I don't
think while consent is an important factor in the way
that we increaters others, I don't think consent is the
only factor for a framework of determining what is moral
and immoral. You know, you can't use consent to determine
(12:32):
whether it's moral or not to exist. I don't feel
like those two pieces meshed together very well. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Well, and also I think like there are so many
other things that we didn't consent to, you know, Like
this is another thing that's talking. It's like we never
consented to die. On a less metaphysical level, I don't know,
like I didn't consent to like to live under this state. Yeah,
where you know they're like doing helicopter raids on apartment
build things and like dragging naked children screaming away from
(13:02):
their parents in the middle of the night, like you
know that. And that's the thing that you can actually
actively do something about that you didn't consent to, that
is actively harming you and everyone else around you, versus
like being born and making that the thing that you're
doing is like okay, like we didn't get set to
living or capitalism. We didn't. We didn't consent to colonialism,
(13:23):
like we didn't ge set to any of the ship
And that's something you could, you know, make not happen,
versus you being born, which there is nothing you can
do to change the fact that you were born. And
it's like, oh, well, focus the next generation children, Yeah,
you want you want you want to focus on like
reducing the amount of suffering the next generation will create
in the world. Have you considered the climate change?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, yeah, I also think that on a broader level, right,
I think it's good to be questioned some of the
intuitions that we may have. You know, even there all
a deepest moral intuitions, I think it's good to maybe
consider them or to be thoughtful about them. But also,
as the Incident Encyclopedia of Philosophy argues, if a theory
(14:09):
implies that the creation of all human life is a
moral mistake, that conclusion itself might be reason to doubt
the theory. This is something called the repugnant conclusion objection,
you know, I mean, because it's repugnant. It's intuitively repugnant
to most people to hear that existence is a mistake.
(14:30):
Nobody should be alive.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, I was like, what, No, absolutely not, get your
shit worked out exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Betray the logic here.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Not great, Like you were saying, Yeah, there'll be a
lot of things in this in the world that suck
right now that cause suffering, and there's a lot of
present joy is alongside that present suffering. But there's also
the value to be had in that potential joy. You know,
the potential possibilities have value. If potential suffering has value,
(15:02):
potential joys should also have value, the potential of creating
a better world, each new child bringing the potential for
greater love, for incredible arts and crafts, for a scientific breakthrough,
is for reshaping the world in a positive direction. You know,
the potential for the unique goods that each individual life
(15:24):
can bring. I believe justifies the risk of suffering because
the world without those future goods would be worse than
a world with them. And yes, humanity can cause harm,
where we are also capable of extraordinary good we can change,
we can reduce suffering over time. New generations are going
(15:45):
to be part of that solution, I will say, though
two anti nationalists credit. One of the points of the
Internet and Psychlopedia of Philosophy points out is that the
debates of what antiinnacialism is theoretical. You know, this is
stuffy philosophers sitting around exchanging notes and writing books. Right,
(16:07):
most of its advocates are not actually putting forward policies
that are restricting people's ability to create life. But the
same cannot be said for the other side of the coin,
the pro natalists. Yep. So, in broad terms, pro natalism
(16:33):
or just natalism, is the belief that reproduction is a
societal good or even the society needs more children. This
movement is getting louder and louder these days. It's shaping
policy debates in the US, in Europe and Asia and beyond, because,
as I mentioned in the previous episode, fertility rates are
falling almost everywhere. Countries like South Korea, Italy, Japan, and
(16:56):
the US are seeing fewer booths than needed to sustain
their current populations. So you're going to be seeing pronatalism
in various forms shown up in politics and even in
tech circles, especially in those ways taxles. Now, prenatalism is
a broad umbrella. You know, you can have the mild
the position of supporting families with policies, and most people
(17:17):
are not opposed to that, But you also have the
strong pronatalist stands, which is actually urging or incentivizing or
mandating both for cultural, economic, or ideological reasons. Pronatalism was
motivated by a few different reasons. You know, there's the
economic anxiety of a shrink in population meaning fewer workers,
(17:38):
more retirees, and strained pension systems. There's a nationalistic argument
of worries about cultural continuity, which tend to titter into
the reactionary directions, and the pronatalism today is very much
political as a result. In the US, Republicans have been
leaning into it, framing the low booth rates as a
(17:59):
national crime. And in Europe you have countries like Hungary
under Victor Auburn which have made pronatalism a signature policy.
It's a very ineffectiveness. The religious motivations of pronatalism are
also pretty interesting. You know, you have the being fruitful
and multiply directive in the Bible, which some take as
(18:19):
far as the quiver full movement, which is the whole
thing about having children by like the dozen no more.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Then you have the tech elite circles pushing pronatalism because
it connects with the ideas of human progress. One of
the pronatalists who most famously practices what he preaches mostly
for worse is he on Musk. Yep, right, he's he's
a big Nazi about it. For one, because of this
(18:47):
we'll worry about white facility rates. But he also thinks
that global rates as a whole or a bigger threat
than climate change. So I mean it seems like he's
single handedly trying to fix that with his seed is spreading. Yeah,
is his assembly line of children with the accompanying product
barcodes for names, and I just feel bad for them, honestly,
(19:11):
to have that as a father.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
No, it sucks. Yeah, it's not great. It's not good.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
And so he and his billionaire bodies of the belief
that civilization will collapse if we don't make more babies,
Silicon Valley circles are funding pronatalist think tanks and embryo
optimization projects. A lot of policies are also coming out
of the pronatalist camp. Unlike the anti natalists. Historically, countries
(19:38):
like the Soviet Union hand their off medals like Mother
Heroine for women with large families, and the Russia of
today has revived similar awards recently, alongside like I mentioned
in the previous episode, banning anti natalist propaganda. Now some
countries are offering tax incentives for both and even proposing
baby bonuses of thousands of dollars is paid for each booth.
(20:01):
Thousand said dollars per birth is kind of a spit
in the face because that's not even going to last
the first couple months of a child being born. Let's
be real, children are extremely expensive. Yeah, yeah, proniceists also
tend to push things like expanded family benefits, child allowances,
or holes and subsidies for parents. These, I would say
(20:23):
are the more liberal minded or progressive minded pronace lists
as much as you can be a progressive and a
proniac list, because they're actually considering the ways that they
can make actually bearing children and raising children a bit
easier for the people who have to do it. That
sort of support also includes things like expanding IVF access,
(20:43):
subsidized and fertility treatments, you know, improving embryo screening, that
sort of thing. Places like Scandinavia also have generous leave policies,
which are often cited as a model of soft pronetalism
because it makes it easier for people to balance work
and child rearing. But he don't tend to hear these
policies coming out of the much louder pronatalist conservative camp. Right.
(21:07):
What you get from them and from their pronatalism tends
to be restrictions and women restrictions and abortion and body
autonomy policies that conflict with the goals of reproductive justice
and gender equality, sometimes putting women's health at risk. And
also conservatives push lots of narrative with their pernatalism, large
families sense of valorise. They frame childbearing as a civic duty.
(21:32):
You know, they appeal to legacy and culture and identity.
When you get into that white supremacist camp, and you
also get the whole eugenics of it, you know, the
tech elite prenatalist wing. They're pushing for things like gene editing,
embryo selection, and the sort of stuff that Musk is
talking about with his racial replacement anxieties. In any case,
(21:55):
the effectiveness of even the few positive policies has been
pretty mixed. Countries have tried pumping billions into subsidies, and
often fertility rates have barely budged deep structural issues like
the cost of living, cultural norms around gender, career paths,
health concerns. All these often we the incentives of a
(22:18):
couple of thousand dollars or extended opportunity leaves. You know,
if people don't want to have babies, they're not gonna
have babies. If they're not confidence in their ability to
have children raise an environment that they feel is best
for them, they're not gonna have children. You know, people,
more than ever have that choice, and unfortunately a lot
(22:40):
of the pronacialist policies don't care about making child bearing easier,
you know, easing the path to make that choice. They
just want to pressure people to have children. Yep, you know,
they loose right back to misogyny, a reaction against women's freedom,
pushing them back into the kitchen, pushing them back into
that Subsivian position in society. So I have to look
(23:03):
at both sides, right, you have the anti natalists and
the pronatalists. Don't create life to avoid suffering, or you
must create life to preserve society. I guess you could
call me a centrist. The anti natalists repulse me, and
the pronatalists equally repulse me. You know, I'm wary of
anyone claiming that you must have children or you must
(23:25):
not have children. I'm weary of a world where these
kinds of choices are couced by others. You know, As
an anarchist, I'm a firm believer in autonomy, in personal
freedom and the ability to decide one's own life. That's
what matters to me. You know, I don't intend to
have children myself. I do like children a lot. I
was once a child myself, and I look forward to
(23:46):
being an uncle. A godfather and all that, but that's
my choice. You don't let your choice be your choice
and my choice be my choice. Make choices freely, resist
the pressure for me the camp and keep the agency intact.
That's all I have to say on it.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Honestly, Yeah, I mean honestly. That covers that stuff I
was gonna say so.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, I mean with that, if be can wrap it, yeah,
all the poets, all the people this has been, It
could happen.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Here, Peace, It could happen Here is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Thanks for listening.
Al Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to ache it up
in here. I'm Andrew Sage also known as Andrewism, and
I'm joined once again by that's a cue.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Mia Wong girl, who was really really the first time
was like I Am not going to miss my cue
this time. And then this time I was like, oh,
I'm waiting for the queue, and then it was like shit,
that's the cue. And it took my brain like several
seconds to be like, oh no, it would be very
funny if the editors just edited out the pause so
(00:41):
everyone has no idea what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
That's that would be hilarious actually, But there was unaware
that was like a ten second pause before me I
came in.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
No, really truly, this is Mia on like three hours
of sleep brain. I was like, oh, yeah, right, the
key is going to come and then it things going
great for be A Wong, the other person who's on
this show. You know who I am. Statistically, if you're
listening to the show, who of.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Course, I mean speaking of seconds. By the way, in
those ten seconds that you were waiting for your queue
that had already passed, hundreds of people were born, you know,
every second somewhere someone is being born. Like other animals,
humans have this tendency to multiply. But should they That
(01:39):
is the question of the day. This is the last
episode I was on. We spoke about the worries surrounding populasia.
You know, whether we have too many people or too
few people. But the question of making people or not
making them has been the subject of a few ideological classes.
There's a whole movement of thinkers who argue that in
(02:00):
new life into the world is a big mistake. These
are the anti natilists. On the other side, you have
those who say that having children is good and essential.
That's the proneat to list cap. So in this episode
will be getting into that tug of war philosophically and
weighing the issues with both. Because I'm not going to
(02:21):
make it a secret, I'm not a fan of either
of them. I don't know, how do you feel about.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, this is the one, the one good Stalin quote.
They're both worse.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So we have to pick among those twos. Let's start
with the anti natilists. What what's the kind of gut
reaction or impression you get from those those folks.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I don't know. I think there's a combination of stuff
that's largely harmless and sometimes is funny, Like you get
protested people holding up signs that are like I didn't
ask to be born or didn't consent to be born,
and it's like sure, but then then there's all people
just do mass you things about it. So it's great,
it's a good time. It's a very normal time for politics.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean when I think of them,
I tend to think cringe and reddit. But they actually
have a philosophy outside of Reddit forums. So, according to
the Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy, anti natialism is the view that
it is either always or usually morally impermissible to brookerate. Now,
(03:30):
most of us grew up with the idea that life
is inherently valuable, right, but anti natilists disagree. They see
life as a buden rather than a gift. Very edgy,
very reddit. But you know, it's something that has been
around since before the Internet. While not himself an anti natalist,
the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who lived in the nineteenth century,
(03:53):
is taught by some anti natalists as a contributor to
their philosophical foundations. In his description of life as constant,
striving frustration and pain. In the twentieth century, the Romanian
writer Emil Choran argued that non existence is the ultimate
form of peace. His philosophical pessimism regarded individual life and
(04:17):
human history as a whole as a record of error, illusion,
and futility. And most famously, South African philosopher David Bennetta
laid out one of the main anti neatilist arguments in
his book Better Never to Have been the harm of
coming into existence. It's a bang aside, though. Now you
(04:38):
can find theoretical contributions to anti natilists thought in Buddhism's
idea that life is suffering, or incidant interpretations of it
rather or incident gnostic traditions that saw the material willed
itself as a kind of cosmic mistake. Now, there are
a lot of reasons that anti natialists put forward for
their stance. There are philanthropic misanthropic arguments an planutialism. You know,
(05:03):
the philanthropic ones focus on harm to the individual who
is brought into existence, while the misanthropic arguments tend to
focus on the harm that new people cause to the will.
So there's the consent argument that Mia would have mentioned.
You know, basically, a child that cannot consent to be inborn,
so by creating them you're forcing them into life. They
didn't ask for a life that will inevitably include suffering.
(05:26):
Another argument is in that sort of negative utilityianism camp.
It's the idea that our moral priority should be reducing suffering,
not increase in happiness. In fact, they don't see the
potential or actuality of pleasure as an offset to suffering
at all. You know, under their view, even a single
(05:46):
unit of suffering is unacceptable, and since every new life
will include suffering, not creating life is the surest way
to reduce it. If Benetta had the famous asymmetry argument,
which is that the presence of pain is bad, the
presence of pleasure is good, but the absence of pain
is always good, even if no one appreciates that good,
(06:08):
and the absence of pleasure isn't bad unless there's someone
missing out. So put simply, according to the argument, by
not having a child, you avoid guaranteed suffering without depriving
any person of joy because that person doesn't exist. So
that equation is probably one of the main pillars, i'd
(06:28):
say of the anti Natilists as a movement. You know,
you might be thinking to yourself, Oh, but I'm glad
to be alive.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
No, you're not.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
According to according to Bennetta and the anti Natilists, you're
deluded to think so. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls
it the deluded gladness argument. Basically, your positive view of
your own life is unreliable. But how it argues that
we have cognitive biases like optimism and selective memory and
(07:10):
so on, which distort how viciously we assess our own suffering.
So many good life reports. Even if you think you
have a good life or a decent life, you're deceiving yourself,
according to him. Do you think people are deceiving themselves
when they say that they enjoy their lives?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
You know, this entire line of argument is just making
me be like, you need to do less philosophy and
like go outside and live.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Like it's just like, yeah, I mean, I get the
whole thing about you know, all mental bias towards optimism
and that kind of thing, but that doesn't invalidate the
joy of people appreciating their life.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, it's like this. This sounds like the exact script
you get in your head when you're really depressed. It's like, okay,
like have you considered getting your depression managed and getting
help for it instead of like doing philosophy about it.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
I feel like you would be an antenage list. Oh
you're yeah, like another thing murders well.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And it's also frustrating because it's like the most compelling
version of this argument is about like this world right
now is absolutely dog shit and I can't justify bringing
someone into it. But that's like too grounded. It's all
these people are like, no, no, no, no, no, Actually, here's
like this philosophy that proves that that life bad.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And it's like, uh, I mean that there are antage
lists arguments that do get into that more grown dated
Oh yeah, definitely, no, yeah, thing you know that they
have one argument about multiplying suffering, right, because every child
you bring into the wool is in just one boos son.
You know, they have the potential to hapture themselves and
grandchildren and so on, multiplying the child answers of pain, disease, loss,
(09:02):
suffering down the generations.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It's like this is like long termism shit it's just like,
instead of like actually analyzing the world, we're going to
build unbelievably complicated and completely meaningless, like abstract models of
it and try to base our things off of that.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's it's totally ridiculous. Now, I understand.
You know, our Tarck record isn't the best. You know,
they're their plagues and slavery and genocide, environmental destruction, and
some of them, see, well that's the best thing. The
best thing we could do is to voluntarily go extinct,
you know, to step off the stage of the earth.
And that connects with the general misanthropy, and I think
(09:41):
the misanthropic argument that humans are some kind of blight
on the world. Yeah, and they're anti nelists who take
it a step further as well, And they're not just
antilists for humans, they're universal antiseilsts. So they believe that
not just human births are problematic, but existence itself, sentient
beings across the board, human or animal are better off
(10:04):
never being brought into life at all.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Really, truly, at this point, brother, this is a you problem.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
You just don't like existing, Like, we can work on that,
but this is not a philosophical think, like you're just depressed, Like,
come on, what are we doing here?
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, I mean, anthonatialism is making some very heavy claims,
and they're obviously going to be coming to arguments because
people are going to roll over with the kind of
asslutions that it makes. The most intuitive answer I would
give is that yes, life involves suffering, but it also
includes pleasure and joy and creativity and achievements, and for
(10:42):
most people, those positives outweigh the negatives. And if you're
a radical, you recognize that some of the negatives of
life are not inevitable. The famines, the wars, the suffering,
the poverty, it's not inevitable. It's a product of economic
and political systems that we have the power to change.
And yes, there will always be suffering. They may always
(11:05):
be some diseases, there will always be death, right, but
that doesn't mean that existence is worse than non existence.
I'm glad to exist. Me. I feel like you're probably
glad to exist. I'm glad you.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Exist, yeah, most of the time. Like this this is
a distinct improvement for positions I have been in. But like, yeah,
it's nice, yes, you know, like even even in the
middle of like the hell world.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
It's nice. Yeah, and yeah, the biases may skew our perspective,
but the fact that we overwhelmingly choose life itself is
a reason too not throw it out.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Whilst people are given the choice do you want to
live right now? And I mostly people want to say
they're going to live, you know. Yeah, and yes, we
don't consent to be in born, but there are other
things that we don't consent to that we still benefit from.
You know, in funds, don't consent to be vaccinated, but
it's it's something that benefits them, you know, we educate
(12:08):
in funds, we restrain them from danger. We don't ask
their permission necessarily to do these things, but it's just
for their well being, for their benefit. And I don't
think while consent is an important factor in the way
that we increaters others, I don't think consent is the
only factor for a framework of determining what is moral
and immoral. You know, you can't use consent to determine
(12:32):
whether it's moral or not to exist. I don't feel
like those two pieces meshed together very well. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Well, and also I think like there are so many
other things that we didn't consent to, you know, Like
this is another thing that's talking. It's like we never
consented to die. On a less metaphysical level, I don't know,
like I didn't consent to like to live under this state. Yeah,
where you know they're like doing helicopter raids on apartment
build things and like dragging naked children screaming away from
(13:02):
their parents in the middle of the night, like you
know that. And that's the thing that you can actually
actively do something about that you didn't consent to, that
is actively harming you and everyone else around you, versus
like being born and making that the thing that you're
doing is like okay, like we didn't get set to
living or capitalism. We didn't. We didn't consent to colonialism,
(13:23):
like we didn't ge set to any of the ship
And that's something you could, you know, make not happen,
versus you being born, which there is nothing you can
do to change the fact that you were born. And
it's like, oh, well, focus the next generation children, Yeah,
you want you want you want to focus on like
reducing the amount of suffering the next generation will create
in the world. Have you considered the climate change?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, yeah, I also think that on a broader level, right,
I think it's good to be questioned some of the
intuitions that we may have. You know, even there all
a deepest moral intuitions, I think it's good to maybe
consider them or to be thoughtful about them. But also,
as the Incident Encyclopedia of Philosophy argues, if a theory
(14:09):
implies that the creation of all human life is a
moral mistake, that conclusion itself might be reason to doubt
the theory. This is something called the repugnant conclusion objection,
you know, I mean, because it's repugnant. It's intuitively repugnant
to most people to hear that existence is a mistake.
(14:30):
Nobody should be alive.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, I was like, what, No, absolutely not, get your
shit worked out exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Betray the logic here.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Not great, Like you were saying, Yeah, there'll be a
lot of things in this in the world that suck
right now that cause suffering, and there's a lot of
present joy is alongside that present suffering. But there's also
the value to be had in that potential joy. You know,
the potential possibilities have value. If potential suffering has value,
(15:02):
potential joys should also have value, the potential of creating
a better world, each new child bringing the potential for
greater love, for incredible arts and crafts, for a scientific breakthrough,
is for reshaping the world in a positive direction. You know,
the potential for the unique goods that each individual life
(15:24):
can bring. I believe justifies the risk of suffering because
the world without those future goods would be worse than
a world with them. And yes, humanity can cause harm,
where we are also capable of extraordinary good we can change,
we can reduce suffering over time. New generations are going
(15:45):
to be part of that solution, I will say, though
two anti nationalists credit. One of the points of the
Internet and Psychlopedia of Philosophy points out is that the
debates of what antiinnacialism is theoretical. You know, this is
stuffy philosophers sitting around exchanging notes and writing books. Right,
(16:07):
most of its advocates are not actually putting forward policies
that are restricting people's ability to create life. But the
same cannot be said for the other side of the coin,
the pro natalists. Yep. So, in broad terms, pro natalism
(16:33):
or just natalism, is the belief that reproduction is a
societal good or even the society needs more children. This
movement is getting louder and louder these days. It's shaping
policy debates in the US, in Europe and Asia and beyond, because,
as I mentioned in the previous episode, fertility rates are
falling almost everywhere. Countries like South Korea, Italy, Japan, and
(16:56):
the US are seeing fewer booths than needed to sustain
their current populations. So you're going to be seeing pronatalism
in various forms shown up in politics and even in
tech circles, especially in those ways taxles. Now, prenatalism is
a broad umbrella. You know, you can have the mild
the position of supporting families with policies, and most people
(17:17):
are not opposed to that, But you also have the
strong pronatalist stands, which is actually urging or incentivizing or
mandating both for cultural, economic, or ideological reasons. Pronatalism was
motivated by a few different reasons. You know, there's the
economic anxiety of a shrink in population meaning fewer workers,
(17:38):
more retirees, and strained pension systems. There's a nationalistic argument
of worries about cultural continuity, which tend to titter into
the reactionary directions, and the pronatalism today is very much
political as a result. In the US, Republicans have been
leaning into it, framing the low booth rates as a
(17:59):
national crime. And in Europe you have countries like Hungary
under Victor Auburn which have made pronatalism a signature policy.
It's a very ineffectiveness. The religious motivations of pronatalism are
also pretty interesting. You know, you have the being fruitful
and multiply directive in the Bible, which some take as
(18:19):
far as the quiver full movement, which is the whole
thing about having children by like the dozen no more.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Then you have the tech elite circles pushing pronatalism because
it connects with the ideas of human progress. One of
the pronatalists who most famously practices what he preaches mostly
for worse is he on Musk. Yep, right, he's he's
a big Nazi about it. For one, because of this
(18:47):
we'll worry about white facility rates. But he also thinks
that global rates as a whole or a bigger threat
than climate change. So I mean it seems like he's
single handedly trying to fix that with his seed is spreading. Yeah,
is his assembly line of children with the accompanying product
barcodes for names, and I just feel bad for them, honestly,
(19:11):
to have that as a father.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
No, it sucks. Yeah, it's not great. It's not good.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
And so he and his billionaire bodies of the belief
that civilization will collapse if we don't make more babies,
Silicon Valley circles are funding pronatalist think tanks and embryo
optimization projects. A lot of policies are also coming out
of the pronatalist camp. Unlike the anti natalists. Historically, countries
(19:38):
like the Soviet Union hand their off medals like Mother
Heroine for women with large families, and the Russia of
today has revived similar awards recently, alongside like I mentioned
in the previous episode, banning anti natalist propaganda. Now some
countries are offering tax incentives for both and even proposing
baby bonuses of thousands of dollars is paid for each booth.
(20:01):
Thousand said dollars per birth is kind of a spit
in the face because that's not even going to last
the first couple months of a child being born. Let's
be real, children are extremely expensive. Yeah, yeah, proniceists also
tend to push things like expanded family benefits, child allowances,
or holes and subsidies for parents. These, I would say
(20:23):
are the more liberal minded or progressive minded pronace lists
as much as you can be a progressive and a
proniac list, because they're actually considering the ways that they
can make actually bearing children and raising children a bit
easier for the people who have to do it. That
sort of support also includes things like expanding IVF access,
(20:43):
subsidized and fertility treatments, you know, improving embryo screening, that
sort of thing. Places like Scandinavia also have generous leave policies,
which are often cited as a model of soft pronetalism
because it makes it easier for people to balance work
and child rearing. But he don't tend to hear these
policies coming out of the much louder pronatalist conservative camp. Right.
(21:07):
What you get from them and from their pronatalism tends
to be restrictions and women restrictions and abortion and body
autonomy policies that conflict with the goals of reproductive justice
and gender equality, sometimes putting women's health at risk. And
also conservatives push lots of narrative with their pernatalism, large
families sense of valorise. They frame childbearing as a civic duty.
(21:32):
You know, they appeal to legacy and culture and identity.
When you get into that white supremacist camp, and you
also get the whole eugenics of it, you know, the
tech elite prenatalist wing. They're pushing for things like gene editing,
embryo selection, and the sort of stuff that Musk is
talking about with his racial replacement anxieties. In any case,
(21:55):
the effectiveness of even the few positive policies has been
pretty mixed. Countries have tried pumping billions into subsidies, and
often fertility rates have barely budged deep structural issues like
the cost of living, cultural norms around gender, career paths,
health concerns. All these often we the incentives of a
(22:18):
couple of thousand dollars or extended opportunity leaves. You know,
if people don't want to have babies, they're not gonna
have babies. If they're not confidence in their ability to
have children raise an environment that they feel is best
for them, they're not gonna have children. You know, people,
more than ever have that choice, and unfortunately a lot
(22:40):
of the pronacialist policies don't care about making child bearing easier,
you know, easing the path to make that choice. They
just want to pressure people to have children. Yep, you know,
they loose right back to misogyny, a reaction against women's freedom,
pushing them back into the kitchen, pushing them back into
that Subsivian position in society. So I have to look
(23:03):
at both sides, right, you have the anti natalists and
the pronatalists. Don't create life to avoid suffering, or you
must create life to preserve society. I guess you could
call me a centrist. The anti natalists repulse me, and
the pronatalists equally repulse me. You know, I'm wary of
anyone claiming that you must have children or you must
(23:25):
not have children. I'm weary of a world where these
kinds of choices are couced by others. You know, As
an anarchist, I'm a firm believer in autonomy, in personal
freedom and the ability to decide one's own life. That's
what matters to me. You know, I don't intend to
have children myself. I do like children a lot. I
was once a child myself, and I look forward to
(23:46):
being an uncle. A godfather and all that, but that's
my choice. You don't let your choice be your choice
and my choice be my choice. Make choices freely, resist
the pressure for me the camp and keep the agency intact.
That's all I have to say on it.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Honestly, Yeah, I mean honestly. That covers that stuff I
was gonna say so.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, I mean with that, if be can wrap it, yeah,
all the poets, all the people this has been, It
could happen.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Here, Peace, It could happen Here is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could
Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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